English 015 - Americans Abroad
The Lyle's Creepiness
The Lyle's Creepiness
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Bryan Ciborowski
The Lyles enter into The Sheltering Sky on an extremely peculiar note. The first scene we see the Lyles is when they knock on Port’s door, come in, and instead of making normal conversation, Eric Lyle remarks on Port’s bag tags, “You have some nice labels on your bags…Luggage always fascinates me” (pg. 63). Right away the reader can tell that the Lyle’s creepiness is a mysterious friendliness. Later, we can see the mysterious friendliness brings upon openness towards Port that can be described as a window into the Lyle’s past experiences and feelings towards their surroundings on their car ride to Boussif, “The Arabs! They’re a stinking, low race of people with nothing to do in life but spy on others” (pg. 71). The car ride to Boussif is revealing of the Lyle’s personalities because we as the reader can see how critical they are towards absolutely everything; Port thinks at one point, “I’ll kill this woman yet” (pg. 75).
Another creepiness about the Lyles is Mrs. Lyle’s irony. She criticizes Eric for not thinking before speaking, and that, “it all comes from lack of discipline”, which makes him “no better than an imbecile”(pg. 72). It is ironic because Mrs. Lyle should be taking her own advice about thinking before speaking when talking to Port in the car. Mrs. Kyle makes herself out to be a rude, prejudice woman who feels she is better than her surroundings, and although this may be true of her personality even when not around Port, it surely characterizes her as a person that no one abroad would favor.
Posted by on November 06, 2003 at 02:15 PM